Linocut demo: Magpie and fencepost

Go ahead, start laughing now, everyone. I'm four days from departure for my residency at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum and two days ago I decided I wanted a demonstration piece other than the gerenuk linocut I worked on earlier this month.

The change was partly motivated by practicality. I've been gathering supplies to ship ahead and I have decided that my larger registration jig is more than I want to deal with. But of course that's the jig I used for the gerenuk, so something had to be started with my smaller setup.

Enter another little magpie piece. In total it will involve just seven color passes, and I can say that with confidence because the first six are already done! The seventh will be finished on site next week.

Step 1: Light blue

Step 2: Gray. The apparent bands of color are an artifact of my camera
phone and the fluorescent light over my table.

Step 3: Ochre to brown blend. 

Step 4: A second ochre to brown blend.

 I didn't want to get too crazy with the background on this demonstration piece, so just employed some "swoopy" lines.

Step 5: A rusty brown. It looks very orange in the photo, but it's not really.

Step 6: Would you believe this color pass was blue?

The apparent dark brown of Step 6 was achieved with the application of a transparent blue over the rusty brown. Basic color theory at work: complimentary colors (opposites on the color wheel) mixed together to create more neutral hues. The final color will be a blue-black, so using a transparent blue at this stage should support that and keep it from being too brown.

It's a "quick-and-dirty" demo piece, given that I didn't even have an image in mind three days ago, but I think it will do the trick. Whew. Now I can think about all the other things I have to do before I go!